


holding hands across time

by OceanMyth



Series: Ocean's ATLA Drabbles, Oneshots, and Ficlets [21]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Dreamsharing, F/M, Hakoda and Kya are here but they don't talk, Katara has two short & minor ones, Panic Attacks, aang isn't qualified for this, and Kya dies (that's the MCD) offscreen, katara just wants affirmation from her family, sokka is a jerk, the closest thing i could get to a "childhood best friends" au while still being canon compliant, there are happy things here i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:15:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28014537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OceanMyth/pseuds/OceanMyth
Summary: Katara only has one clear memory of the dream. It sounds weird, and it is— despite having the dream, or similar dreams, almost every night for four years of her life, she only has one crystal clear memory. Which means that when it starts to fade to the same murky half-truth as normal dreams, she has nothing to try to repair it with.When it’s gone, it’ll be gone for good.(In which Aang and Katara know each other, before they even meet.)
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar), except the maiko the maiko is very much obvious, vague background ships
Series: Ocean's ATLA Drabbles, Oneshots, and Ficlets [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2113209
Comments: 10
Kudos: 48





	holding hands across time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [itsmoonpeaches](https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsmoonpeaches/gifts).



**the first dream**

Katara only has one clear memory of the dream. It sounds weird, and it is— despite having the dream, or similar dreams, almost every night for four years of her life, she only has one crystal clear memory. Which means that when it starts to fade to the same murky half-truth as normal dreams, she has nothing to try to repair it with.

When it’s gone, it’ll be gone for good.

The dream takes place in a vast field, though there’s little she knows for sure about the setting. The air is foggy, and she _thinks_ there might be grass under her boots, but she can’t see through the fog to be sure. She bends down, and pulls one of her mittens off, skimming her hand through the blades. It feels different feet than the tough and sharp grass she’s used to, but there’s something about it that tickles her memory.

She’s been to this field before.

Katara tries to walk forward, intent on trying to figure out what this field even is, where she is, what’s going on. But every time she tries to put her foot down, it feels too weird, the ground squishy and uneven beneath her feet. 

She topples backwards, after putting her foot into a hidden hole covered in the fine grass and barely avoiding rolling her ankle. The ground is slightly damp from the fog, and some loose blades of grass stick to her hands. She wipes them off on her parka, and peers into the milky swirls of fog around her.  
  


“Hello?” she asks the emptiness, and her voice is both muffled and echoing. Resonant.

She’s not supposed to be alone here— she knows that. Somehow. Maybe she’s had this dream before, or something. It feels familiar.

“Hello!” 

There is a voice calling back to her, and Katara is too calm. She shouldn’t _be_ this calm, there’s a strange voice, in the strange fog, calling to her, in the middle of this strange field.

She stands up again and turns. It’s aimless, she doesn’t have a particular direction she’s looking for the owner of the voice in— the fog is messing with the sound and echoes too much—but that’s okay. He’ll be the one to find her, not the other way around.

The fog vanishes suddenly, forming a clear tunnel between her and a boy.

_The_ boy. 

The one she’s been waiting for without realizing it. She’s more than a little freaked out now, the earlier calm evaporating into the fog. The boy is about her age, about seven and a half, and he’s dressed in orange and yellow. His head has been shaved, and his clothing is loose and light, cut in a style she’s never seen before.

He runs towards her excitedly, and the fog dances and creates spiral patterns against the edges of the invisible tunnel as he moves.

Katara thinks about walking toward him, weighing the likeliness and consequences of falling on her butt in front of a stranger, with being rude— she’s not sure it’s _rude_ to stand still in this situation, but before she makes a decision, the boy is skidding to a stop in front of her. 

She blinks.

If it wasn’t clear before, this boy is not from the Water Tribe. She doesn’t think he’s Fire Nation either— his big dark grey eyes are making him hard to place. But she’s never seen anyone from the Earth Kingdom with eyes like that— when the light catches them just right they sparkle with tiny flecks of silver. Not that she’s met many people from the Earth Kingdom, she’s only seen a couple of traders. 

For all she knows, storm-grey eyes are common there.

“Um. Hi there,” she says, tearing her thoughts away from his pretty eyes. She twists her mittens in her hands behind her back nervously.

“Hi!” the boy chirps, rocking forwards onto the tips of his toes. They stand there awkwardly for a moment.

“What’s your name?” he asks brightly, seemingly unaffected by the silence. Katara taps the tips of her boots together, eyes fixed on where her legs disappear down into the fog. Is it safe to tell this strange boy her name? 

The boy fidgets awkwardly, then clears his throat.

Katara wakes up.

**the boy and the girl in the fog**

Aang wakes up in his bed confused.

He’s had weird dreams before— lots of them, enough that he has a whole system of dealing with them, and he tries to talk to Gyatso before breakfast most mornings, so that he can talk through the way his dreams make him feel— but he’s never had a dream quite like this one.

His weird dreams generally involve _feelings_ , surges of intense and unfamiliar emotions, which occasionally are followed by brief flashes of images. He’s used to those, even if the things in them make him scared and uncomfortable.

This dream was weird and yet... _nice._ He doesn’t remember the name of the girl, but there’s the impression lingering that she’d been a little shy, but kind and fun. (He doesn’t let himself linger on the ‘really pretty’ that follows for very long. She was just a dream, after all.)

He spends all morning distracted. Aang gets scolded more in the time before lunch than he ever has before—when not causing mischief. It’s little things, like nearly walking in front of someone carrying a tall stack of clothing, or bumping into someone. Little things that are throwing him completely, because he can’t get his mind off a dream.

Eventually he can’t take it anymore, and he wanders out to a secluded balcony in the quietest corner of the temple to think. He pulls himself up onto the railing and swings his legs out into the empty. Fishes his marbles out of his shirt pocket. 

Aang clicks the marbles around in his hands idly, and tries to figure out why his mind won’t let this dream go.

“Aang?” He looks up, and tucks the marbles back into his pocket.

“Oh, hi Gyatso,” Aang says, and tries to give him a little smile and wave in greeting, but he doesn’t sound excited and the smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

Gyatso comes up next to him, standing slightly to the left. Aang can barely make his silhouette out of the corner of his eye. Neither of them say a word.

“How are you doing today Aang?” Gyatso asks. He doesn’t sound accusing, but Aang knows better— or at least he thinks he does. “Are your dreams bothering you again?”

“Is it that obvious?” Aang groans, and buries his face in his hands. He continues to explain, though the sound is muffled. “It’s the dreams again. Except only not. Well, it is a dream, but it’s not like the ones I’ve had before. There’s this girl, and she’s… she’s— Ugh. I don’t _know_. It’s a dream, but not a dream.” Gyatso pats his shoulder sympathetically.

“If I understand what you are saying, Aang, you had a dream, and the dream is bothering you. How does that make the dream any different than the ones you’ve struggled with in the past? The contents of the dream do not change the fact that it was nothing more than a dream.” 

“You’re right.” Aang sighs, “ It’s still a dream, even if it’s not like the other ones I get. But—I dunno, Gyatso, the dream seemed important— the girl seemed important—and I can’t figure out _why_ .” Aang kicks his legs in the air, and wishes that this was something simple, like bending practice, or even normal lessons, where even if he didn’t know the answer right away, it would be _there._ He could ask somebody, and they’d _know_.

Aang sighs, and looks down into the valley off the side of the temple. There aren’t any answers down there, but he’s not sure where else to look. 

The sound of chimes echoes through the temple then, and Aang startles. He hadn’t realized it was so close to lessons!

“You’d best be going, Aang. You wouldn’t want to be late!” Gyatso chuckles, and Aang jumps to his feet, and sprints towards the courtyard in panic.

“Bye Gyatso!”

* * *

Katara doesn’t try to fall asleep again, after waking up from her strange dream. She’s hungry, and she’s no stranger to weird dreams. The only thing that’s unusual about this dream is that she wasn’t scared. Normally the only dreams she remembers are the bad ones.

The time she spends with her family before falling asleep again is unremarkable. Later she won’t be able to pick out this day from the rest of that winter. The details will muddle and blur between days before it, and days after it. Perhaps even some memories from years past will get thrown in.

She has a snowball fight with Sokka. He manages to hit her hard enough that she cries, something that happens far too often in her opinion—they need a family rule against him packing his snowballs that hard, and Dad needs to teach him how to _aim_. Maybe that will stop him from hitting her in the face so much. 

To get back at him, she bends as much of a snowdrift as she can directly into the back of his head. He goes down sputtering, and coughing the snow that went up his nose, and Katara can’t contain her laughter. Mom pulls him out and attempts to scold her, but Katara can see the laughter hidden in the corners of Mom’s eyes.

Then Mom and Gran-Gran tell stories, while she and Sokka are bundled up next to the fire, warming up. Dad _tries_ to tell a story, but he’s not very good at it, and it just leaves her and Sokka confused.

Katara falls asleep there, listening to the soothing voices of Mom and Dad, as Mom tries to convince him to let her finish the story.

She finds herself back in the field almost immediately. She’s in the exact same place as last time, the fog curling around her toes. She _thinks_ she’s in the same place at least—the fog makes it hard to tell. The boy is the same distance away from her as he was the night before, and Katara’s mittens are still balled up in her hands. It feels like the dream is picking up right where it left off.

The boy bounces forward on his toes awkwardly. It doesn’t look like he knows what to do with his hands—they keep fluttering awkwardly in front of him, and he finally settles on clutching them together behind his back.

“ _So_ … Uh. Hey, again. We didn’t get around to introducing ourselves last time—I’m Aang,” he says, with a lopsided smile and an awkward chuckle. Well. His name certainly isn’t Fire Nation. Katara swallows and tentatively smiles back. Telling him her name can’t hurt, right?

“I’m Katara.”

Somehow trying to talk to this boy is harder than anything else she’s ever done. It’s stilting and awkward, and maybe it’s because this is a dream, but maybe it’s because she’s never tried to talk to someone her age before. (Sokka doesn’t count.)

“So… where do you live Katara?” Aang’s smile gets wider, and a bit more strained.

Katara has a decision to make. 

She’s still not sure that Aang’s not Fire Nation. Every time her parents have told her not to talk to strangers, every summer when she’d been ushered back into the tent when the traders arrived, every dire warning that Gran-Gran told her and Sokka over the fire, all these times are throbbing in her head. 

But he’s just a dream! It shouldn’t matter what she tells a boy from her dreams— she can’t think straight. She should just tell him she’s from the South Pole, and leave it there. After all, the South Pole is a big place, and it’s not very likely he’ll know enough to figure out where her family is. 

Aang answers his own question before she gets the chance though. “I’m from the Southern Air Temple!”

“Oh! I just visited near there. My family took me and my brother to the foot of the mountains, so we could learn to swim—Gran-Gran says that it’s very important for waterbenders to learn to swim, and the ocean around the South Pole isn’t very warm. We didn’t visit the Temple though.” 

Katara freezes then, realizing what she just said. She _told someone she’s a waterbender she told_ a stranger _she’s a waterbender_. Her breathing starts to pick up, and her vision goes a little blurry and faded around the edges. It’s probably more than a little— the fact that she can tell with all the fog is a bad sign.

“You’re a waterbender? That’s so cool! I’ve never met a waterbender before—are you okay?” 

Katara falls back onto the squishy ground, pulls her knees up to her chest, and puts a hand over her heart. It’s beating really fast. Really really fast. She takes a deep breath, but it doesn’t help.

Aang is suddenly standing over her, eyebrows furrowed in concern. He drops down next to her, folding his legs underneath him. He puts a gentle hand on her arm.

“Breath with me?” He takes a couple of exaggerated breaths, so she can match his rhythm. They take a few long, deep breaths together, and Katara’s heart rate slowly comes back under control.

“You’re not from the Fire Nation, are you?” Katara asks, still trembling in fear, and Aang shakes his head slowly.

“No— I’m an Air Nomad.” Katara gasps softly in surprise, but Aang doesn’t seem to hear her. “I would have thought the shaved head gave it away— Kuzon and Bumi always tell me it’s a dead giveaway, and make me put on a hat before we try and go anywhere.”

“How did you know how to help me?”  
  
“It’s something my mentor showed me— I get bad dreams sometimes, and I wake up with my heart feeling like it’s going to come bursting right out of my chest, and that’s how he taught me to deal with it,” Aang says and pats his tunic as if he’s looking for something, only to sigh and twist his hands together instead. Katara frowns. 

This is a _very_ detailed dream.

* * *

After a few more nights spent talking with the boy in the field, Katara realizes that she can’t remember everything when she wakes up. Details, bits of conversation— they all slide out of reach, and the more specific the information is, the harder it is to remember. 

Sometimes she can’t remember anything at all, and the only way she knows she’s been to the field is the fading sensation of fog on her face. Everything comes back when she reenters the field, but while in the waking world, she has that first dream, and not much else.

Katara sneaks out this time, after she wakes up from the dream.

She steps around her sleeping family on her way to the door, trying hard not to trip on anything. It’d be especially bad if she woke anyone else up. When she finally gets out, she doesn’t go far, just to the edge of the ocean. Gran-Gran had told her the story of the original benders so often now, that she sometimes just wants to sit and talk with the moon. After all, she’s the last bender in the whole South Pole. 

And sometimes Katara thinks that maybe the moon gets lonely, in the long night, without any other southern waterbenders to keep her company, and all the waterbenders in the north in the middle of the endless day.

She clambers to the top of a jagged chunk of ice, and looks out over the horizon. The sea blends with the ice, into a smooth sheet of glowing white, interspersed with dark cracks and the shadows of waves. The moon floats high overhead, silver and luminous, and comforting despite her distance.

“Hi,” Katara says, and clears her throat awkwardly. 

“I know it’s been a while since we’ve talked. I’m sorry about that, but I stayed out way too long last time, and Mom ‘n Dad got worried about me. So I thought I’d wait until spring, for our next talk.” She tugs on her hair restlessly.

“But something _weird_ happened earlier, and I wanted to come and talk to you about it. Maybe you can help me figure out what’s going on, before I tell anyone else about it. I don’t want them to worry, especially if it’s nothing,” she takes a big deep breath, and waits.

The moon doesn’t respond. She never does, but Katara takes another deep breath, and launches into her story as if given permission by the silence.

“I had this _dream._ And it wasn’t like any dream that I’ve ever had before. But I can’t remember what happened— I can’t even remember the boy’s name. There’s this nagging feeling that he’s important, that I _need_ to remember what happened in the dream, but I can’t!” Katara tucks her knees up against her chest, and the wind ruffles the fur trimming of her parka. 

The gentle breeze tugs her hair loops, and she stuffs them back into her hood irritably. Then she sighs, and drags the tip of her boot through the snow.

“I probably won’t tell my family— there’s not really much to tell, now that I’m thinking about it, and it’s not like he’s real or anything.” Katara wraps her arms around her body, and looks up at the moon. She feels very small all of a sudden, and very lonely.

“I wish he was real— I’d like to be his friend.”

**death**

Katara didn’t mean to fall asleep. 

She’s been trying not to sleep, actually. Mostly because she’s had a hard time trying to find the dream-field, and has instead been getting sucked into horrific nightmare after horrific nightmare.

She’s woken up sobbing or screaming so many times in the last few months that it’s not worth it to try and find whatever comfort the field and the boy could give her. On one particularly awful occasion, she’d woken up to the rank smell of bile, and realized she’d thrown up in her sleep, after dreaming about Mom, and what she’d seen when she’d gone back into the tent.

So when Katara finds herself in the field one night, her first reaction is panic. Aang is next to her in a heartbeat, fluttering around her like a moth. She can’t hear what he’s saying, over the rushing and pounding of her blood in her ears.

He puts his hand on her arm, and suddenly all she can hear is his breathing. It’s not hard to match it after that, and even though she’s still sobbing so hard that the breaths come in gasping splutters, she can hear him.

Katara wakes up.

Things don’t go back to the way they were before, when she comes back to the field next. 

There’s a stillness to the air. The surroundings have changed from mysterious to dreary, though there is no change to the field or the fog.

Katara’s not the same person she was before. 

Aang notices. He notices when she comes back to the field all quiet and silent after a bad day, when she gets angry over the smallest things. When she starts crying after finding herself in the field.

He doesn’t say anything, but he notices. She knows he’s still trying to figure out how to reach out, how to help her. She’s glad he hasn’t figured it out yet. Maybe that’s selfish of her, but it’s nice to see that he’s just as lost as she is.

Aang is a comforting presence though, and it means that she’s not afraid to go to sleep anymore, once she starts appearing in the field again, instead of having those nightmares. He fills the silence, the one that has fallen over Katara’s life since Mom was killed, and since Dad went away, and since Sokka has decided that it’s more important to play soldier than to help the rest of his family mourn. 

Gran-Gran was never very loud to begin with, and Katara now understands why.

Aang is good at filling in the silence. He tells her about what it’s like, living in the Southern Air Temple. He fills the air with babblings about his travels or his friends, with stories he’s heard, with gossip from places she’s never been.

She hasn’t told him about it yet, the event that’s torn her family apart, the thing that’s turned her into someone completely different and strange, but she thinks he’s figured it out, just a little. She’d talked about her family all the time before it happened, and now she barely says anything at all.

Sometimes Aang fills the silence by telling her about airbending. 

She hangs on his every word then, eyes wide as he talks about what it’s like to be in a courtyard _full of other benders_ , learning and working together. It sounds more magical and strange than anything that Sokka’s accused her bending of being.

Eventually, she works up the courage to ask him to show her some of the forms—because asking someone to bend like that seems like a step over an invisible line that became a wall once Mom was murdered—and he does.

It’s the first time he gets a laugh out of her since Mom was killed.

**arrows**

The last time she ever shares a dream with Aang, he has tattoos.

They’ve been dreaming together for about four years, but she still can’t figure out whether Aang is imaginary or a mirage-echo of someone that had been lost when the Fire Nation attacked the Air Nomads. When Gran-Gran had explained to her what had happened to the Air Nomads, she’d sat by the ocean for hours, staring at the horizon. She hadn’t known why it had affected her so much until she fell asleep that night. 

She drops into the field, and turns excitedly looking for Aang. She’d managed a bending move she’d been trying to get for _ages_ today, and Gran-Gran had fussed over her bending where someone could see her (she hadn’t, she’d been bending out alone in the icefield, and if she didn’t use her bending then Mom died for nothing why didn’t they _understand_ ) and Sokka had just shrugged it off.

Katara knows that Aang will understand.

When she finally sees him, she stops, and stares, because he has an intricate blue arrow coming over his forehead, and two more peeking out from beneath his sleeves. He’d told her about his upcoming mastery ceremony, but— he looks so _different_ now.

“Aang— your arrows! Congratulations!”

Katara pulls him into a hug. He smells like incense and ink and dye, and things that she only half remembers from when the Earth Kingdom traders used to stop by. She’s careful to not squeeze too tight— they’d discovered that the pain caused by injuries carries over into the field too, and she doesn’t know exactly how the arrows trail over his skin.

“Did you have your ceremony yet?” she asks curiously, and Aang shakes his head.

“No, that won’t be for another day or two—I need time to heal. I’m really excited though—the monks say I’ve got something really important to do afterwards, and I can’t wait to find out what it is! How was _your_ day?” he asks.

“Remember how I told you about how I was trying to turn snow into water with my bending? I finally did it! Nobody seemed to care though— Gran-Gran scolded me, and well. You’ve heard me complain about Sokka before.” Aang’s hand lands on her arm, and Katara only notices then that she’s fished the end of her braid out of her parka hood and is fidgeting with the end of it.

“I’m sorry Aang, here you are with your arrows, and I can’t stop thinking about my stupid brother long enough to celebrate!” Katara rubs at her eyes, hoping that the tears that had been forming aren’t obvious, and smiles at Aang.

“Don’t be sorry, Katara. You’re amazing,” Aang says, and she’s only heard him sound this serious once or twice before. “I’m sorry your brother can’t see that.” He takes one of her hands, and she lets her thumb trail over the point of the arrow in fascination. His eyes are still as pretty as they were the first time she saw him.

Katara closes her eyes, leans forward, and kisses him.

It only lasts a second.

His lips are chapped and windburned.

When she opens her eyes again, Aang looks like she hit him between the eyes with an icy snowball. He blinks once, twice, and then Katara’s scrambling away from him, apologizing profusely through numb lips, trying not to cry.

The last thing she sees is his hand reaching out for her in the fog, before she wakes up.

She wakes up embarrassed and crying, and she can’t remember why. Katara had never been this upset the morning after a dream before. It’s a little scary, not knowing what happened to make her this sad. She doesn’t sleep that night, because she can’t remember what happened, but she does know that she’ll die of embarrassment if she ever sees the boy again.

She avoids the field for days, until the embarrassment isn’t eating her from the inside out anymore.

By then it’s too late.

The dream slips through her hands like snow, there and then gone, melted and vanished. It’s just out of reach all night, and by the time she sinks into a dreamless sleep, she has a sinking feeling in her gut.

She can’t find the field the night after either.

Or the night after that, or the night after that, or the night—then it’s winter again, and she has to reconcile with the fact that she’s never going to find the field again. She breaks down sobbing. In the morning she doesn’t talk very much to anyone. She knows it concerns Sokka and Gran-Gran. That they worry about her, even if the way they show it is sometimes awkward. 

They haven’t had experience with this brand of grief from her— the absence of her mother is a deep and aching absence, but it bursts out of her like fire. Like the smoke and ash she’d inhaled that day had become embers in her lungs, and to calm the burn she has to breathe out liquid flames, scorching everyone around her.

This grief is aching and deep just the same, but it doesn’t fester inside her. There’s something missing, like her lungs no longer hold the air she breathes in. She’s forever inhaling nothingness, surrounded by her loneliness. The boy in the fog was her only friend, and if he was real she has no idea how to find him again.

She can’t even remember his name.

**waking up**

Katara doesn’t think about the boy, or the dreams. She doesn’t _let_ herself think about the dreams, and especially not the boy. And by the time she turns fourteen, she’s traded out her reminiscing and wondering for even more chores around the village.

She’s sad, of course, when the faint tinges of memory cross her mind. The grief doesn’t ever quite go away— the boy in the fog had been her only friend, and he’d been nice, and sweet, and— she blushes, when the faint memory of lips pressed to hers crosses her mind— probably her first love. For just being a recurring dream, it had felt so _real_ , even when she couldn’t remember the exact events. But she has better things to do, and so the boy in the fog goes forgotten.

Soon she can’t even remember his face. Then the only thing left is the feeling of fog and misty clouds against her skin, the smell of an incense she can’t name, and inexperienced lips pressed to hers.

When she breaks another boy, one who also has blue arrows, free of the ice, she briefly thinks about asking him if he ever had dreams about a girl who looked like her. 

But then her rational mind— yes, Sokka, she _does_ have one of those, her ‘freaky water magic’ didn’t melt it— quickly tells her that it couldn’t be possible. He’s twelve after all, and though she was twelve when the dreams stopped, that does little to erase the fact that he was born over a _century_ ago.

She firmly pushes the memories of the dreams out of her head. Aang doesn’t deserve to be compared to fleeting memories of _dreams_ , for spirit’s sake. Even if he and the fog-boy seem eerily similar to her.

By the time they’ve left Kyoshi island, it’s worked— though she can’t resist kissing his cheek. Katara bites back her disappointment when he doesn’t show any familiarity with the feeling. After that, she no longer thinks about the dreams. Not intentionally, at least.

These are the times she remembers, even though she’s trying not to— The tentative half-brush of their lips in the Cave of Two Lovers. The first time he kisses her for real, on the Day of Black Sun. Never anything more than that— just things that feel familiar sparking the memory.

She certainly doesn’t spend sleepless nights after they dance together in a hidden cave, comparing Aang’s wind-burnt lips to a graying memory, and wishing that the two were one and the same. That would be ridiculous, even for a dreamer like her.

After the war is over, she doesn’t think about the dreams at all.

Well.

Not quite.

The final time she thinks about them is when the whole group, all much older— well, if four years older counts as _much_ —is gathered in the Jasmine Dragon, playing a game that Sokka and Toph invented.

Unlike most games that Sokka and Toph invent, this one doesn’t involve drinking unhealthy amounts of cactus-juice. However, the game is still awful, since it’s inventors had gotten into a game of one-upmanship, and have been using everyone else in the room like tiles on a Pai Sho board to make each other miserable.

So far Toph is winning, if only because she doesn’t seem to be physically capable of embarrassment. Or if she is, Sokka hasn’t figured out how to embarrass her yet.

“Truth or dare, Twinkle-toes,” Toph says, and the grin on her face makes Katara wince.

“Truth,” Aang answers hurriedly. Katara pats his knee gratefully—Toph’s dares are notorious for having an area of effect, rather than just targeting one person—and snuggles closer into his side. She’s not _completely_ sure what material his robes are made out of, but they feel delightful where her cheek rests against them.

“Why don’t any of you lily-livered cowards ever pick dare?” Toph pouts loudly.

“Gee. I don’t know,” Mai answers, looking up from the half-hearted game of _real_ Pai Sho she has going on with Suki.

It’s their biannual rematch, first started a few weeks after they won the war. But what had started out as a highly competitive match has fizzled out into an attempt to distract themselves from everything else that’s going on in the room. Ty Lee hovers over Suki’s shoulder like a butterfly— Suki's let her braid her hair, despite it being too short to do anything exciting with, and Ty Lee is overjoyed and overenthusiastic. She’s been attempting to put as many flowers into Suki’s short hair as humanly possible the entire game. 

Katara hopes that none of the other Warriors are allergic to pollen.

“Maybe it’s because last time you managed to get the Fire Lord arrested. In his own palace,” Mai continues. “Because the guards couldn’t believe that he was completely sober. Then again, sober people don’t normally strip, paint themselves in mud, and try to hold a faux-council in front of their ministers with all of the baby turtle ducks from the pond, dressed in only their undergarments.” 

Toph had only added that last stipulation to her dare because Mai and Katara had both threatened her. Mai because she wanted to protect what was left of her boyfriend’s dignity, and Katara because Toph wasn’t being considerate to the people that would be able to _see_ the dare.

“No, that can’t be it. You’re right. We’re just lily-livered cowards,” Mai finishes, before turning back to her game. Katara pointedly does not look at Zuko, both because the example that Mai used is not her favorite memory of him, and because she’s sure that the sappy expression he’ll have on his face will turn her stomach.

It wasn’t so bad, at first, but he gets that expression _every single time_ Mai opens her mouth. 

No matter what Sokka may say, she and Aang are not that bad.

Toph sighs, and tries really hard to roll her eyes at Mai— it’s not very effective, but rolling your eyes at the wall never is— then brightens up again as she points vaguely in Aang’s direction. Katara can feel Aang’s muscles jump and tense.

“Alrighty then. Aang, tell me about your first kiss in as much saccharin, sugary-sweet, _oogie_ detail as you can,” Toph says triumphantly. Sokka groans, and throws an arm over his eyes. Aang rubs the back of his head with the arm that had been around Katara.

Katara can feel her cheeks starting to heat up.

“Well, this is going to be a bit of a disappointment, sorry Toph—and I’m not sure if this counts as a first kiss to the rest of you, but it does to me.” Katara blushes, sure that he’s about to tell the rest of the group what happened in the Cave of Two Lovers.

“It was uh, right before I was frozen—” Aang’s voice hitches in the same spot it always does when he says the word frozen. Katara puts her head against his shoulder, trying to support him as best she can, even if she’s a little hurt that he’d never told her that he’d kissed someone else before the ice. 

“I was twelve, and had just gotten my mastery tattoos.”

“I’d had these dreams, since I was a lot younger, and there was a girl in them-”Katara’s pointedly not getting her hopes up. She’s not going to let herself be disappointed again. Toph boos loudly.

“Aw come on Twinkletoes! I wanted something _good_ and _gross_ , not some wishy-washy dream bullshit.” Toph’s leaning so far back in her chair that she’s practically parallel to the floor.  
  
“I warned you that this was going to be disappointing,” Aang says, and Toph grumbles, before waving him to continue. “I’d had these dreams, and there was a girl in them— she was probably the prettiest girl I’d ever seen in my life at that point.”

“I don’t know how it happened, because these dreams were the _hardest_ to remember, but I know that she kissed me. I think I reacted badly, because I never had a dream with her in it again. Either way, that was my first kiss.” Aang shrugs, but Katara’s heard all that she needs to. 

“It was you. It was you the whole time,” she murmurs in wonder, and then she presses a kiss, much better than their first, to his lips. Toph cackles behind them as Sokka groans into his hands.

Katara doesn’t think about the dreams anymore after that. Well, first she and Aang have a long talk, but then she stops thinking about them for good.

Because she doesn’t _need_ to think about the dreams anymore after that— she has the real thing, right here beside her.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a lot more… condensed? than I wanted it to be, but at the same time this was a nightmare to write for literally no reason. (For example: If you felt like Katara’s grief over Kya was rushed in the fic, that’s because it was. I’ll probably come back to explore that & her relationship with the moon properly at a later date)
> 
> There were a lot of things that I had to cut, as trying to flesh them out would wind up making this a much longer fic, and I was _really_ ready to be done with this fic. (This is why some of the more obvious plot holes are never addressed— we both know they’re there, but let’s pretend not to see them please)
> 
> On the other hand, I’m glad I stuck it out and wrote it, because I love dream sharing AUs, and the fact that I couldn’t find one for Kataang was a little annoying. Hopefully other people who like the trope enjoy!
> 
> Tell me what you thought in the comments, or on tumblr @justoceanmyth.


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